One of the downsides of a 64-bit environment is the increased size of
pointers. This means that the cost of a String increases from
something like 12 bytes per char to something like 24.
I notice BEA uses something called "compressed pointers" to get the
64-bit (more registers, etc) benefits without paying the
(cache-thrashing) cost.
http://e-docs.bea.com/jrockit/releases/5026x/relnotes/relnotes.html#wp1079760
Something for GHC?
-k
--
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants